Obama chides the bankers. They giggle to each other.

I have read several articles which defend the bonuses and salaries of the bankers by claiming we need the best of the best to see us through these tough economic times. Anyone who feels the Wall Street bankers who are being bailed out are “the top talent” which “need to be retained” is a buyer looking for some more snake oil to purchase. The toxic assets, i.e. credit default swaps and the exotic derivatives insured, while marginally a “mortgage related” group of securities, have no inherent value. They are too far removed from the actual “sticks and bricks” mortgages held by the nation’s banks. These bad assets have no value unless someone shows up to buy them. The Wall Street gang INVENTED this class of assets and began selling them on the world market, making a ton of money until other traders globally realized they were buying an empty bag and quit purchasing the pixie dust. Instead of buying the assets (a meaningless term in this case, as items with no inherent value are not assets), our government should have allowed the banks to fail. This asset class would have washed out of the system, the schemers involved would have ceased to exist and the smaller banks with real touching-the-ground assets would have been strengthened in the process. By giving the Wall St. banks who invented the hoax an unimaginable amount of taxpayer money, we are only ensuring that they will be able to continue their peer-to-peer trading network at our expense.

These “bankers” are only top talent if you admire the skill with which you have just been breathtakingly swindled.

And putting in place a man who cheats on his taxes (Tim Geithner) to oversee these miscreants should not assuage anyone’s unease about further monies going out to the banks.  Obama’s remarks that “they should be ashamed”, coming immediately after he and Bush jointly bullied Congress to release the balance of the TARP funds to them, must be a source of snickering for these bankers.  It’s like repeatedly telling your kids that they will be punished for certain behaviors, but never actually using the time-out chair.  They do, eventually, get the message that you are just full of hot air.

We had a chance to cleanse the system of this worthless paper, and instead we BOUGHT it like a bunch of bumpkins being hustled at the county fair by the three-card-monte man.